...because you want to play NCAA/Madden, but you know you'll be disappointed in what you play because the game you have has none of the features you've been reading/watching/listening for & drooling over in the next-year's-version previews & demos.

The fact that it's taken me the better part of a week to try to download the NCAA 13 demo (thanks a lot, chintzy Frontier wireless modem and my own laziness regarding running ethernet cable through the wall) isn't helping matters either.

shigogouhou

Going to the forums & posting:
[quote]Congratulations, "Madden NFL 10": You've finally managed to add hot new features that were part and parcel of the late, great "NFL 2K5," a 4-year-old game played on last-generation hardware.
...
Still needing an upgrade? Line interaction that goes beyond sumo patty-cake, star player differentiation and crisp route running/timing-based passing that works like it does in the NFL -- in short, features you can find in the 2-year-old "All Pro Football 2K8."[/quote]
Immediate ban.

Write it in an article that gives out fake awards? Linkback to OS?
http://www.operationsports.com/forums/sports-gaming-news/382858-espns-page-2-sports-video-game-awards-new-post.html
An admin will post the complaints for you.

Way to make a stand, OS.

Nobody's perfect, no game can make everyone happy, but instead of embracing that fact & using it as a sort of competition (y'know, the thing the 2kers wanted in the first place?) it turned into a "Do it our way or we're taking our ball and going home.....oh, wait, we're leaving the forums regardless, shh don't tell them let's see how many complainers we can get banned so when we go back next year it'll be empty except for the handful of our fans who won't call our assorted bluffs! BRILLIANT!"...and OS complied.

We've got no devs. It's now an irrelevant point that we don't have devs, because anyone with anything to say was either kicked out for not saying it in a positive enough light, or disenfranchised as a whole with the collective series of events & therefore uninterested in what would amount to a waste of their time trying to contribute.

I'm disappointed on the whole. Being told which graphics program to use & given a template, the OS populace would likely make their own jerseys rather than posting topic after topic pointing out the lack of brown Browns pants, or numbered Browns helmets, or Alex Smith's missing chin strap, or whatever malady they personally were interested in. Wouldn't take them that long, and they'd likely do it free (at most the 'price' of learning their real name to put it in the manual & credits that nobody really reads). Instead we're left talking to ourselves because the devs got tired of the negativity brought on by their own failures (which they all have because they're human, for god's sake) and no matter what we find, we're left to rot.

shigogouhou

Waste of time, since you announced where you were going.

Everybody who thinks your work is trash is either already on the EA forums bashing it, or on their way there now.
Many people who weren't bashing it, myself included, now consider you more cowardly for cutting & running at the first sign of dissent rather than stepping up & assuaging the fears with explanations as to why & how bugs slipped through QA.

To put it in perspective: at launch, I saw ~1500 people in the Madden forums at one time. Today I rarely see over 250 (of course as I say that it loads up at 271 to make me look foolish). To put that in cash terms, that's $90000 of your sales on OS on launch day, down to just $16260 today.

To put it another way, considering the size & approximated salaries of the QA staff listed in the credits, it would be cheaper for EA to make Madden 2011 go gold 2 months before launch (i.e. finish the game for regular consoles by mid-June), and send every OSer a free copy in exchange for QA work a large number of us already do for free. Get patch #1 certified before the game even comes out, and make it double the size thanks to the prolonged patching time. Patch 2'll still be available for last-minute/minor fixes, and then the rest of the Madden 2011 "development" time can go to your new favorite, microtransactions!

shigogouhou

Let me start off with a disclaimer: I picked the Mets. Feel free to consider any successes I had merely the result of picking the overpowered team.

In any event. Three games in, here's what I've found.
- If you do not pitch in the allotted time, the game throws a random pitch right down the middle of the plate. This is how I won 2 of 3 games, as the final pitch was a lag pitch that floated down the pipe & I cranked it for a game-winning HR (with Castillo and Schneider, respectively, showing that you do not need uberpower to hit HRs)

- There is no penalty for throwing nothing but garbage pitches, so don't expect to see many unearned strikes.

It would behoove you to go into the pitching practice mode and throw every pitch to the extreme corners of the allowable pitch window, to get a feel for what those pitches look like.

- There appears to be only a speed penalty for having a tired pitcher...this drops velocity on all pitches (doesn't seem to affect movement much).

Considering the speed range for level 1s is between 74 for a change and 85 for a 4FB, this is particularly devastating as it allows you to get timing down for something between the heat & the slow stuff, and by the end of the game you can hit everything thrown with that very same timing. At higher levels this dropoff will be less concerning, as you'll have more pitches and more quality in those pitches, so a 95mph 4FB dropping to 85mph actually becomes useful as it throws off the hitter's timing of the pitch as well.

- One final note on pitching: maybe my timing is just dreadful, but it seemed to me that every pitch with movement had extremely late break. I would routinely swing at pitches that appeared to be fastballs a little off the middle of the plate, right at the letters...that would end up being curves or sliders low & out of the strike zone. (I, obviously, did not go into practice mode and learn what those OOZ pitches looked like)

- Fielding is automated, but throwing is not (players will run to the ball, but it's up to you to chuck it to the proper base).

- The first game I tried to play (not counted in the "three games in" count) froze up after one hitter; a grounder to second led to a bang-bang play at 1st and the game refused to move on beyond that point. Day one of beta is expected to have some issues like this, and I'm happy to report that this is the only issue I noticed in my hour or so of gameplay.

- A minor foible that comes down to personal preference: you're only allotted 30 seconds at the end-of-game screen, and since this screen contains the EXP information for all your players I see no purpose in rushing us through it.

shigogouhou